Media Center

Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl

For students who love to read, need a new challenge, and like a good competition, the WIA Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl team may be a perfect fit!

“Several years ago, Mrs. Helen Ruffin, a library media specialist in DeKalb County, wanted to find a way to use the nominee books from the Georgia Children’s Book Awards to encourage her students to read. She therefore created a unique reading competition in game format, called the Reading Bowl, using the award nominees. Her vision was to have teams comprised of students from different schools compete to test their knowledge of the selected books. Today, the Georgia Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl is open to students in grades four through twelve across the state. The winning teams from the Divisional Bowls meet at the Annual Conference on Children’s Literature in March for the State Championship of the Georgia Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl.”Retrieved online on August 23, 2013

The Reading Bowl Team is open to any student in grades 4th – 8th grades. Wesley participates in both the elementary and middle grades levels with each team consisting of 5 members and 5 alternates. The elementary team is required to read 16 titles, and the middle school team must read 20 titles. Students selected to be on the teams will need to be committed to the reading bowl and to representing WIA with honor and respect.

Book Fair

Twice a year (in fall and spring), students have the opportunity to stock their bookshelves from our terrific Book Fair selections. In 2018-19, we partnered with Scholastic and Little Shop of Stories to host our Book Fairs.

Local Authors

We continually looks for opportunities to bring the world of books alive at our school and to encourage the importance of reading to our students. Wesley is committed to outreach, bringing local and national authors, as well as literacy programs, to the school.

Some authors who’ve visited our school:

• Marie Marquart, author of Dream Things True and The Radius of Us
• Kate DiCamillo, bestselling and award-winning author of 17 books
• Lincoln Pierce, author of Big Nate series
• Deborah Wiles, award winning author of several books including, Revolution
• Gitty Daneshvari, author of the School of Fear series
• Terra Elan McVoy, author of several middle grade and YA books
• Christy Ziglar of Shine Bright Kids
• Rashan Ali, author of Piper Sky’s Pink Popsicle Shoes